I blinked.
My eyes opened.
I tried to turn, my head seemingly held in a restraint. My arms and legs were numb. My thoughts completely blurred. I ratcheted my eyes from side to side.
As I tried to get my bearings, I heard a voice:
“We’ll be arriving at the hospital in five minutes.”
How was I alive?
There was a mask pressed over my face, oxygen flowing. I stretched my eyes and saw a green-clad EMT, a woman. Red hair tied back in a ponytail. I felt an IV tube coming out of my arm. My vitals beeping back on a monitor. The EKG needle going crazy.
“You were attacked,” the med tech said. “You’re on the way to the hospital. Just hold on . . .”
Through the haze, I strained to recall what had happened.
I remembered running back to my room, looking frantically for something. A book? After that, everything was a complete blank. I felt a stinging pain on my neck and a throbbing on my palm. I lifted it slightly to look. It was wrapped in gauze.
Then it hit me, there was something I needed to say . . .
Something important.
“I just want to prepare you,” the EMT said. “When we get to the hospital, we’re going to wheel you into the ER. They may want to ask you some questions there, if you can concentrate. About what happened, who did this to you.”
I know, I said to myself. I know all this.
I suddenly remembered. I’m a doctor . . .
My brain was buzzing. I tried to focus. There was something I needed to tell them.
Was that it?
No, it was something much more vital, but my mind was totally clouded and whatever it was bobbed farther and farther away on a wave of unconsciousness, drifting out to sea . . .
I could hear by the beep that my heart rate was slow and my blood pressure was falling. You can’t let me die.
I heard the siren and the ambulance swerved into a turn. I tried to speak and latched on to the tech’s arm.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll be there in a minute. You’re a lucky man your door was left open and people found you when they did . . .”
Door left open . . . ?
I suddenly saw Dev, the knife at my throat. Saying good-bye to Kathy and the kids. Knowing I was about to die.
And then the words he had said as I slipped into darkness.
Words that jarred me all over again—my mind sliding backward; my pulse starting to dive; the beeps growing louder and louder as I conjured up Dev’s face, his chilling smile, and his knife dancing before my eyes:
“We’ve got your son.”